Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Voyager 2 Speaking In Tongues

Posted by kdawson on from the now-voyager dept.

dangle sends in an update from the borderland of Sol. "Voyager 2's flight data system, which formats information before beaming it back to Earth, has experienced a hiccup that has altered the pattern in which it sends updates home, preventing mission managers from decoding the science data beamed to Earth from Voyager 2. The spacecraft, which is currently 8.6 billion miles (13.8 billion km) from Earth, is apparently still in overall good health, according to the latest engineering data received on May 1. 'Voyager 2's initial mission was a four-year journey to Saturn, but it is still returning data 33 years later,' said Voyager project scientist Ed Stone of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. 'It has already given us remarkable views of Uranus and Neptune, planets we had never seen close-up before. We will know soon what it will take for it to continue its epic journey of discovery.' The space probe and its twin Voyager 1 are flying through the bubble-like heliosphere, created by the sun, which surrounds our solar system."

12 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. Decoding by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think I can make it out. It says "All... your... base..."

  2. V'ger expects an answer. by axl917 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Don't piss it off, NASA.

  3. v'ger by CDS · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I thought it was Voyager VI that was supposed to come back and we couldn't understand what it was saying...

  4. What! by Tobor+the+Eighth+Man · · Score: 5, Funny

    "It has already given us remarkable views of Uranus..."

    Well, I never!

    1. Re:What! by Lloyd_Bryant · · Score: 5, Funny

      "It has already given us remarkable views of Uranus..."

      Well, I never!

      You most certainly *did*. And NASA has the pics to prove it.

      --
      Don't tell me to get a life. I had one once. It sucked.
    2. Re:What! by tom17 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Rule 34? "Any officer caught sniffing the saddle of the exercise bicycle in the women's gym will be discharged without trial?". I really don't see the relevance here.

      Tom...

  5. Re:Orly? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I used to work for a chemistry department whose *nix boxes were named after elements. The back up sun server (it was previously was the primary server, but it was retired in favor of a more powerful sun box and just kept as a backup) was Uranus. Every time you said Uranus, one of the *nix admins would say "Whose anus?"

    Now, what was really funny was this person had a memory issue. So EVERY TIME he thought it was the first time he had told you the "joke". It got to the point where before he could even say Uranus, every professor would say yes whose anus, and he would just sit there shocked and say "How did you know I was going to say that?"

  6. Tried to find some more info by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    All the news articles report pretty much the same, digested, not particularly informative stuff. The mission page hasn't been updated in a while, the NASA news item isn't any more detailed, and the last operations report was from March 12. But I did learn this from the operations report: they're running the whole mission on less than 275 Watts of power from the RTG units. Wow.

  7. More Like it? by coofercat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have no idea what I'm talking about here, but...

    We now have much better technology, both for getting to space, and for science aboard a probe. For example, even something like the British Beagle 2 Mars mission cost a few million to make, and although it didn't end up returning much of use, it demonstrates how 'easy' such things are (or how hard things are, depending on your point of view, I suppose).

    So I'm wondering, isn't it worth mankind's time to build a (say) £25M long-range probe, like the Voyagers, only designed for the purpose, and shoved into space in some get-there-fast manner?

    I'm sure we can argue about the best use of a limited budget, and what constitutes the best science returned for the spend, for the rest of our lives, but a "cheap" probe sent out every few years to do something a bit random might well do wonders for us and our understanding of the Solar system, let alone the Universe as a whole. I wouldn't presume to say we should do such things at the expense of anything more major, but more to foster some 'experimentation' in space.

    Just a thought... TFI Friday :-)

    1. Re:More Like it? by Burdell · · Score: 5, Informative

      It would probably cost a good bit more than that to build a long-range probe that has to work for many years before reaching its target. Also, you have to pay for ground stations and personnel to monitor it for the years it takes to get somewhere. We have no magic "get-there-fast manner" today; in fact, the Voyagers were able to do so much because of a once-in-our-lifetime planetary alignment (the Grand Tour). The NASA New Horizons probe is going to Pluto (and beyond), and it will take 9.5 years to get there (and if the launch had been delayed by another few weeks, it would have taken several years longer because there wouldn't have been a Jupiter slingshot fly-by).

  8. Re:Garbled how? by b4dc0d3r · · Score: 5, Funny

    They should put it on BitTorrent labeled "Assasin's Creed 3 with Ubisoft's unbreakable DRM -- REAL !!!1! 0-day warez CDC propz to Hippie!!!". It will be fixed in a week.

  9. Re:What year is it for Voyager 1 & 2? by profBill · · Score: 5, Informative
    The relativity calculator at http://www.1728.com/reltivty.htm gives a relativity factor of 1.0000000016077795 for a speed of 17km/sec. If you multiply that all out for the approximate 33 years of travel (back of the envelope style, 33*525600*60), you get about a 1.67 second difference.

    Of course, with the aliens towing in the spaceship, that might be off a bit :-)

    >>>bill